Belonging Somewhere

Because of his profile in the community, Matt’s story is familiar. He passed up a scholarship to the University of Memphis and started touring around Florida with a band. Tired of the night life, Matt emailed the University of Florida (UF) and entered their music program. He eventually completed a masters and pursued a doctorate. 

“When I first went to UF, I really thought I wanted to be a composer,” Matt says. “because I had dabbled in that for a while. And the problem for me was that I heard so much great music from other people, I was like, ‘Well, I can’t do that.’ Now that I feel a little more stable for a second, I’ve been thinking about composing more.”

Matt has composed pieces for Ocala Symphony Orchestra to perform, including a soundtrack to the silent film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. “When I’m writing for a performance, there’s usually a story I want to tell, a feeling or a place that can inspire.”

Matt admits that, sometimes, he has a hard time connecting with music, especially when he is struggling with his mental health. “I feel like I’m not participating with it in a way that I should be. I’m not doing enough or I’m not good enough. Just that whole depressive cloud messes up that music for me. That’s why I just like going to the piano, because that’s not that.

“I deal with depression and anxiety and things, and my favorite thing to do when I feel like that is to just sit down at the piano and play,“ he explains. “That’s sort of pure emotion, trying to speak through whatever you’re doing.”

Matt also deals with the other side of depression: mania. “When I’m the opposite, when I’m on the upswing of really feeling good, I get a lot of work done. I get so much work done. I work in spurts. That’s when I tend to engage the most.”

Matt recognizes that, regardless of how he feels, he still has a job to do, but his experiences have made him a better conductor. “Me dealing with my own stuff helped me be way more empathetic with the musicians I work with, because I know a lot of conductors who are not empathetic, which is crazy because all we do is empathy. All we’re doing is taking someone else’s feelings from 200 or 300 years ago or yesterday and then we’re trying to read that and show it to other people, so if you can’t find empathy—or at least sympathy—something’s wrong. I feel like you’re not effective.” 

That empathy has also made him a favorite with audiences. “What I really love, especially about the audience that we’ve built in Ocala, is they know us really well. They know I’m not a monocle and top hat type.

“That divide that you feel with some orchestras,” Matt continues, “where there’s the musicians and the conductor, who doesn’t even talk. He just comes out and looks at you and turns around and kind of just goes away when that’s over. We’re not quite like that.”

Matt has had the opportunity to teach all kinds of students, most recently at Georgia Tech over the summer of 2022. “Students who are in school to be music teachers or musicians, my goal is to help them be better musicians and better teachers. When it was students that were there for another reason, I still want to teach them to be better musicians, but I just kind of realized I want to support them for what they’re doing.”

Georgia Tech offers music classes but no degree programs. “It’s got all engineers and other [people who] want to keep music in their lives,” Matt describes. “So, it was a totally different vibe from my perspective. It was really cool.”

Matt did have to rethink his role as a conductor and his purpose for being there. But he kept the three questions he always asks his students as his guideposts: 1) What are you passionate about? 2) What can I do to make you better and reach those goals? 3) What can you do to impact the world around you? 

If music was helping engineering students “do their thing” better, then Matt wanted to help them. “That’s why I love teaching.”